A scale replica of the World War II Memorial in Washington was unveiled Sunday in an emotional presentation before veterans and family members at the Wisconsin Veterans Home in Union Grove.

"It's beautiful," said Rodney Overson, a Union Grove resident and World War II veteran who served in the merchant marine.

The room was packed with about a couple hundred people, many of them veterans wearing World War II caps.

"We had no concept we were going to have this many people," said Steven Schaefer, president of the nonprofit Pillars of Honor, which brings the model memorial around the country.

The Traveling World War II Memorial is an 8-foot-by-8-foot version of the original memorial, designed by the Austrian-American architect Friedrich St.Florian.

The memorial plaza has 56 wreathed stone pillars representing U.S. states and territories, numerous fountains and pools and sits between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

The traveling version was the architect's original model that was approved by Congress. It gives veterans and family members an experience with the memorial without having to travel to Washington.

Pillars of Honor, based in Des Plaines, Ill., has been towing it across the country for three years. Noreen Lake, a board member for Pillars of Honor, said the replica was delicate and wasn't made for all the moving around. Parts sometimes fall off and have to be glued back on.

Lake said she thought the model would land in the Smithsonian eventually.

The World War II Memorial was the last of the national war memorials to be built, in 2004, but also the most beautiful and meaningful, Schaefer said.

"You men and women taught us what it meant to be patriots," he said.

The memorial has 4,048 gold stars, each representing 100 Americans who died in the war.

The presentation's featured speaker, retired Col. Jill Morgenthaler, who served in Korea, West Germany, Bosnia and Iraq, told stories of heroes like Ben Salomon. Salomon was a dentist born in Milwaukee who earned the Medal of Honor for killing as many as 98 Japanese soldiers and shielding fellow wounded soldiers before dying in the Battle of Saipan in World War II.

She also spoke of how she stared down Saddam Hussein once in Iraq — but World War II veterans had stared down a far worse evil, Adolf Hitler, she said.

World War II veterans also set an example in their handling of prisoners of war. She said when she meets German veterans who were American prisoners, they often thank her.

"Thank you for your humane treatment of prisoners of war. It was honorable, and you should be proud," she said.

Cornelius Kramer, a World War II Army veteran who lives in Union Grove, said he was impressed with the model. He saw the original on an honor flight to Washington.

"It's very authentic," he said.

It's the first time the memorial made its way to Racine County, though it was brought to Kenosha County the previous year.

Racine County Executive Jim Ladwig was in the audience.

"They truly are the greatest generation, and it's the least we can do to make sure they're all able to view the memorial," he said. "It's important we do all we can to recognize and honor them."